After Struggling For A Year And A Half, Rich Groh Has Become The Man To Beat In Pure Street
"I have been in racing sports all my life," Algonquin, Illinois, resident and Pure Street racer Rich Groh says. "I raced motocross at an early age and was interested in anything that had a motor in it." Rich began building motocross, Chevy, and Olds engines at a time when most of us were still riding around on PK Rippers and Redline BMX bikes. "My first complete engine build was an Olds 350 that I did when I was 14," he says. "I think I was street racing in Chicago the day I received my license."
Rich terrorized the burbs in the mid-'80s with a '72 Hurst Olds that went undefeated on the street. "I was finally arrested while setting up for a street race with Fast Times Motorworks' Chuck Samuels," Rich says. After that incident, he decided the track was a better place to scratch his itch for speed. With a nitrous'd 455 in the Olds, Rich finished Second at the GM High Tech Nationals in 2000, with a best time of 9.38 at 148 mph on a stock suspension.
Before you send in letters about us being closet GM lovers, Rich's story took a turn for the better when he purchased this GT brand-new in 1992. "This par-ticular 5.0 seemed to come out of the factory with more power than most," Rich says. In 1994, he won a Street
Stock class sponsored by Spring Hill Ford. He beat the sponsor's car in the first round, running a 13.38 at 104 mph with just pulleys and gears.
"I think it hurt their feelings because they tech'd my car three times," Rich says. The performances of his Olds and his GT helped spawn a successful engine- building career, and in 2000 when the NMRA came to his neck of the woods for a race in Byron, he got the bug to go heads-up racing.
"Factory Stock was all I could afford at the time," Rich says. So with 145,000 miles on the GT's odometer, he decided to turn it into an all-out racer. Rich performed most of the engine and chassis work, with some help from friends.
Having a Superflow bench in Rich's garage made quick work of finding a good set of stock heads. "My brother Mike threw many a wrench perfecting the short-block," he says.
Power from good heads meant a good drivetrain, and Rich decided on an automatic. "I met up with Len Bertrand from Lentech Transmissions," Rich says. "We worked together to get a fantastic Lentech AOD to be competitive in a class dominated by five-speeds." The Lentech AOD proved to be a durable and consistent performer.
Rich and Justin Burcham fiercely battled it out in Factory Stock in 2001."I found out his grassroots racing background was much like my own," Rich says. "By the end of 2001, we became good friends." Rich won the NMRA Factory Stock championship that year, only to be followed by Justin winning it all in 2002 when Rich vacated the spot with a move to NMRA Pure Street.
Rich's Chicago buddies soon figured out Justin and Michael Washington were just as serious about racing. The battles on the track between the three led to them becoming known as "those East Coast boys." In 2003, Rich (Pure Street), Justin (Real Street), and Michael (Factory Stock) planned to become the three amigos by winning championships in their respective classes. "Things didn't exactly go as planned," Rich says, "but when the chips are down, just go over and catch an eyeful of the Justin Burcham show in the pits to perk up your spirits."
As happens with most NMRA racers, when Rich moved up in class, he had his fair share of bad luck-roughly a year and a half's worth-before he returned to his winning ways midway through the '03 Pure Street campaign. "Last season started off pretty rocky," Rich says, "and I was close to throwing in the towel, but-like all of us-I'm addicted to racing."